Surviving the Cold

I’ve been fortunate enough to tag along with Darwin on his last couple of photo tours based out of Aurum Lodge.  Or maybe ‘fortunate’ is not the word.  It’s been bloody cold!  We set a record for the lowest temperature ever experienced on Darwin’s tours on the first outing!  Right now, I’m away on the second tour, but here are some images made on the first tour.  Brrr.

The shores of Abraham Lake were scraped clean of life.  At -32C and with gusting winds, not much grows here.  We didn’t last long that morning, either!  Below is an image made with a Cokin Varicolor Blue/Yellow filter of the North Saskatchewan River with Hilda Peak in the background.  Ah, sun, blessed sun.

And finally, we visited Crescent Falls in the Bighorn Wildlands.  While the falls are always impressive, I continually find myself playing around in the woods right by the parking lot.  I find that is sometimes a casualty of a photo tour:  participants ask to be directed to ‘the event’ or the thing to see, but perhaps — like me — they may find themselves shooting pictures along the way instead if they were not so focused on the trophy.  Shooters with strong vision do find their shot, I suppose.  This is converted to black and white using Silver Efex (love that plugin!)  I then used the channels in curves in Photoshop to make it slightly more silvery.  The monochrome image of the wind-blasted shore of Lake Abraham above was processed similarly.  I hope these images convey a little of the cold and rather stark conditions.  Photographing in the heart of the Rockies in winter is not for the faint of heart!

~ by Samantha on March 3, 2011.